Shadowed Depths
by skywalker05
Summary: A Nautolan teenager has been kidnapped on Coruscant, and Kit Fisto's and Quinlan Vos' investigation of that event leads to a surprising encounter with Kit's blood family, as well as with one of the deadly agents of the CIS.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is a side project; it'll go for about three chapters._At the height of the Clone Wars, soon after the Battle of Christophsis_…_

* * *

Nekai Fisto could not see. The ally she had been tugged into smelled of trash and salty, faint-with-age fear. Her kidnapper, though, whom she knew only as hard hands on her shoulders and back, exuded only heady confidence. The young Nautolan tried to cry out, but her mouth would not open, as surely as the leather-scented cloth that was tied around her head would not budge and free her sight. Her breathing was shallow, but her headtails could not escape the smell of feelings gone rancid. She tried to pull her away, but her captor's grip was inexorable. In a flash of thought she dug into her pocket and cast the necklace she had just purchased from a street vendor out onto the ground. It rang metallically, thrice.

Her captor hesitated, its movement uncomfortable straining Nekai's back. But the hands did not withdraw, and she was pushed on again.

The comforting scent of her parents faded away as she was rushed down the alley.

Nekai was being led into a dark labyrinth of crime and refuse, away from her family, who would never find her because they were only on Coruscant for vacation—She fought panic. Although she could not see, she desperately tried to count steps to find out how far from the location she knew reasonably well she was--

Her captor pushed her forward, out into nothingness. For a moment she shrieked as she imagined falling into a bottomless skylane, but her outflung hands caught her on soft cloth. Something at the edge of her hearing clicked as she felt her feet pushed forward. She crawled along, identifying her location; the interior of a speeder, one that smelled of new and emotionless materials. She continued forward, exuding frustration. "Where am I, you—!" She shouted in Basic, language of classrooms, using Nautolan scent-music and the thrashing of her tendrils to emphasize her words. "Let me go!"

But her palms found a vertical sheet of transparisteel, either a viewport or a screen like that between the first and second rows of seats in a police speeder. All she could do was look around without sight, and feel the confining walls.

Nervously she sat back in the seat and tucked her hands beneath her headtails, parting the almost full-grown tendrils and arranging them on either side of her head. The speeder started and flew for a time Nekai could not with surety calculate, although it could have been no more than fifteen minutes, leaving her in tense, frightened silence. Then the vehicle stopped, and again the kidnapper pulled her, by the hand now, onto a flat floor.

Nekai tried to pull away, but her captor's grip was stronger than the girl's. Stamps and kicks failed to find her captor's feet or legs. Again she could not speak, as if the organs that enabled her to had disappeared.

She stumbled along, then was pushed to a seated position, her back against a cold wall. She lashed out with her hands, but somehow her blindfold was gone and her captor was out of reach.

Across the dusty room, a thick door closed and locked. At Nekai's right sat a pile of dented, dusty luggage boxes. On all other sides there were only the rough, gray walls. A red light, the only feature on the wall where the door's control panel should have been, indicated that she was locked in.

Her parents would notice that she was gone. They would contact the police. But how hard was it to find someone in a world as complex as Coruscant? Would the customs here be much different than on Glee Anselm? The Fisto family were tourists, had only been on the capital planet for a few days…

She sat back against the wall, breathing shallowly, wracked with nervousness, and draped her headtails around her shoulders, an equal number to each side.

**Coruscant opened its **arms to the galaxy. Although many citizens of the Republic thought of crowds and the poor and the criminal when the city-planet came to mind, Coruscant also hosted the rich and influential. With credits that could have been used to succor the beings that lived in near-squalor, attractions and luxuries were built to make the rich feel as important and appreciated as possible.

One such luxury was the Aquala Tower. A skyscraper filled almost entirely with water, it served as a comfortable living and recreation area for aquatic or oceanic sentients. Affluent Quarren, Mon Calamarians, Neelabi, and others spent time there to feel more comfortable than they even could in the dry environments preferred by most species.

The Force alone does not sustain the lives of even the Jedi, and so Kit Fisto occasionally visited the tower, to bow to physiology and luxury in a miniature sea fashioned after the one in which he had been born. Air, while essential and invisible, sometimes felt rough against his skin, and so he stayed in the deepest part of the expansive room dedicated to his homeworld. The seas of Glee Anselm were warm and shallow, so even in the depths the water was brightly-lit blue-green. Coral grey in secluded caves where he hummed to himself with the sounds and smells none outside his species would recognize as music. In the distance, he could see the murkier waters of other habitats, separated from each other by thick transparisteel.

He kicked his way through the open water, past seaweed-shrouded caves where sometimes he rested, sleepy from the pleasant feeling of water rushing past. What could it possibly be like, he thought, to fear drowning? Like the ocean was a lesser relative of space, he supposes.

After the swim, Kit sat on a ledge just above the beautiful faux ocean, savoring the humidity, soon to return to the Jedi Temple.

He rose and returned to the locker where he had left his cloak and gear. A pressor field just outside the ocean-filled room dried the clothes which he had warm when swimming. In the locker room, he unrolled his lightsaber from where it had been hidden in his overcloak. He went back onto the ledge above the aquatic chamber on his way out of the building.

A dim Force presence signaled a sentient being rising out of the water. It hesitated as if waiting for him to turn around.

He did so, and saw a female alien sitting on the edge of the ledge. She wore a complex suit almost like a humans' diving equipment, and was of a species that Kit recognized but could not recall the name of; on the back of her head, beyond the thicket of fleshy spikes which served her as hair there would be two more eyes, on the back of her skull. Her skin was azure, shading to lavender around her cheeks and pointed ears.

"Master Jedi," she approached him and bowed.

He returned the bow slightly, the lightsaber hilt cold in one hand. "How may I help you?"

"I'm Private Investigator Mina Wakani. I've petitioned for help on a certain case from the Temple, but a kidnapping doesn't seem to take priority there."

Kit would not go back to the Temple without a mission and leave a citizen of the Republic in peril, but he also needed more information. He said, "I would be happy to assist you…" But he expressed confusion as well. Why was she _h_ere if she was on a case? Her species were vestigially aquatic, but they did not need immersion like Nautolans did to survive, and the water their planet thrived on had a slightly different chemical makeup than that of Glee Anselm—which explained the diving suit.

She was quick to understand his expression. One hand dipped into a plastic-shrouded pocket and withdrew a plastic chip that with a press of her fingers projected a hologrammic business card proclaiming her a licensed investigator. "The victim was a Nautolan, a teenage girl. Her parents brought he here for a leisure trip, but she's fallen off the radar completely. I thought that here I might more clearly think about why someone might have wanted to take her and cover their tracks so thoroughly, and hoped to get more of a feel for the Nautolan community in this district."

They walked toward the turbolift to the outside world together. "How long has she been gone?"

"Three days."

Fugitives could go so far in that time.

The detective radiated confidence, but also trepidation; she was kind enough to worry about her clients, a potentially distracting attachment.

Kit asked, "Where are your clients now?"

"They've rented an apartment not far from here."

"If you would permit it, I would like to visit them."

**The nearby apartment **was one that the Nautolans were renting for their temporary stay, but it outclassed any hotel. It was large and finely decorated—the family must have been affluent—but to Kit's dermal scent-receptors the place was covered in fear, worry, and the sense of distance from home.

At the Aquala, the investigator had taken a moment to change into streetclothes, then had led Kit to her speeder, where they discussed some of the more specific aspects of the case. The Nautolans had no enemies, had only come to Coruscant to see the famous sights. Kit had told her his name, but only as she opened the clients' domicile's door did she say "Their names are Karef and Aning Fisto, and they are from Sabilon, on Glee Anselm."

The name could easily have belonged to a family unrelated to Kit's, evidence of the repeated names which were bound to occur among the billions of individuals in each species, but Kit smelled them when he entered the apartment. It was as if he was walking into pheromones signed in the same hand as his own, and the Force whispered of import.

The two Nautolans were sitting on a lavender couch in the apartment's first room, and they stayed there while the door read Wakani's credentials and the detective and the Jedi entered, but then came smoothly forward to meet them. Both looked haggard and displeased. The male—Karef--was solidly built, and wore a brown, long-sleeved tunic that looked glum against the bright lime of his skin. Aning displayed one of the rarer pigmentations, blue skin that contrasted favorably with her violet tunic.

"This is Jedi Master Kit Fisto," Wakani said. "He is going to help us."

"Thank you," Karef said, and clasped Kit's proffered hand in one of his own. He exuded the personal scent that was familiar to Kit. A moment later, the scent-message changed—_recognition, memory—_then was buried in calmness.

These sensations moved by quickly. Kit thought, with a small twinge of fear, that this Naurolan knew how to _use _his scent-emanations with more dexterity than Kit did; they flicked by faster and contained more information—almost pictures—then had had ever experienced before. _I, _Kit realized, _think like a human. _But he had the Force, a depth of its own. These people were as unaware of it as Wakani was of the scent-data. Within it were more feelings, as loud as music; fear and loneliness swamped the parents of the lost child.

Kit paced a few steps away from the group, folding his hands into the wide sleeves of his overcloak. _Play the part of the Jedi Master, even if they can sense my concern. _He said, "Detective Wakani had told me about when and where your daughter was lost. What I need is something that belonged to her—if possible, something she had with her just before she was taken."

Immediately, Aning stepped forward. She opened one blue-skinned hand to reveal the stone pendant from a necklace; she had been holding it so tightly that it had pressed a shadow of its shape into her skin. Her voice was soft and fluid; Kit fund himself disheartened when she finished speaking. "She had just purchased this, and we found it in the mouth of the alley where…" She looked at her feet.

"I do not wish to take something that has sentimental value to you," Kit said, "but I know a Jedi who may be able to draw information from this."

"No! Here," Aning offered the trinket and he took it. "It's far more important that we have Nekai herself."

"Of course." Kit felt the rounded sides of the pendant in indent the skin of his palm.

Aning bowed her head again, this time in thanks.

"Will this take long?" Karef asked gruffly.

"It is a priority," Kit assured. "We will take action within no more than two days."

There was no relief in their Force senses; not yet. But hope glimmered, like sunken treasure in a dark ocean.

"Excuse me," Aning asked. Although Nautolans were not inclined to breaking eye contact as a sign of nervousness like many humanoids did, the flecks of copper-color in her black irises seemed to convey the same feeling. "We had a son, who would have been about your age, and he was needed by the Jedi…"

The rote answer formed itself into words before Kit could realize what he was saying. "Force-sensitive children could be dangerous to their family or community if they were left with their parents. Strong emotions in young life could cause Jedi to be emotionally unstable in adulthood, denying the Republic the defense that keeps those families safe, or even posing a danger to them."

They all looked at one another, awkward. Surely, Kit thought, they all suspect. The surname—the home region—the _scent_—were undeniable. None present except Kit knew the proper procedure for a Jedi encountering his family, and Kit had just followed that procedure.

_What_, he thought, _if the kidnapper had taken the girl to get to me? _Was this scenario too unlikely to be chance? Aning said, "But do you think that he is happy?"

He had to reply, although the answer inexplicably disheartened him. Perhaps he saw a glimpse of what he could have been, what he could never have gotten to do. The life of a Jedi—the _battles_—were his light in life. "Yes. Incredibly happy sometimes, as if everything was meant to be as it is."

Anger flared up in Karef, but Aning reached back to take his hand. Karef's jaw tightened. "At least if we lose two children we'll know who to blame."

Wakani stepped up beside Kit, all four eyes narrowed. "We'll do what we can."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I haven't read the comics that feature Quinlan Vos, and Wookieepedia conveniently forgot a "personality" section for him, so I found out little there in my quest to characterize him properly. Therefore, feel free to critique anything he may say or do in this fic—I'd appreciate the help.

* * *

II

Scraps of flimsi, stained food wrappers, and other sundry refuse whirled into the air and settled, shushing and clattering, again as Quinlan Vos' speeder settled beside the sidewalk just outside the alley where Nekai Fisto had disappeared. Kit moved forward and lowered his cowl from around his shoulders as the speeder's engine sound died and Vos unfolded himself from inside the vehicle. He was a tall humanoid; his dreadlocked black hair brushed the speeder's support strut as he exited to stand in front of Kit. The two did not know one another well, but Kit knew Vos as one of the few Jedi with the power of psychometry, the ability to read memories attached to inanimate objects.

The Nautolan Jedi gave Vos a small smile. "It is fortunate that you were available. I was afraid the council had assigned you a mission, like they have everyone else."

Quinlan scanned the street carefully. It was not a disreputable area; shops lined the streets, and one could tell that in the daytime people of mostly higher social classes would be shopping here at their leisure. At night, though, one was reminded by the new, nocturnal businesses that opened and by the quiet street that fear lurked close to the Senate district; that affluence attracted the affluent, but also the parasites that fed on it; that parents reminded their children that these were times of war.

Quinlan said, "I am to be assigned soon…take no offense when I say that the specifics of the mission are between the council and myself."

"We cannot all be Skywalker and Kenobi, our so-called 'secret' mission against the CIS' new flagship trumpeted all over the HoloNet—and I'm glad of that." Kit smiled. Vos gave a thin, unenthusiastic smile in reply.

Pleasantries over (and stiffer than Kit would have liked them), Kit produced from a pocket the necklace that the young Nautolan had dropped. "I would like if you could read this for me."

Kit had told Quinlan the specifics of the case previously, over the comm—the Kiffar Jedi had not asked about the clients' coincidentally similar surname to Kit's. He took the pendant, and Kit tensed, unsure of how psychometry manifested itself. Quinlan simply closed his eyes and folded his fingers over the pendant.

A moment later, he opened his eyes and said, "This way."

He hurried toward and down the alley. Brightening the twilight at the its end was a shabby café with its shutters open, yellow light spilling from the windows into the nearby street that ran parallel to the one the Jedi had just left. Kit kept close to Quinlan's shoulder as they walked, listening for the other man's muttered words.

"The kidnapper struck quickly, from a window above, and carried the girl this way. She could put up little fight…The kidnapper was a Force-user…the echoes are faint, but I feel darkness."

A Force-user. That narrowed the numbers of suspects; unless another dark Force user had escaped detection by the Jedi on Coruscant, an unlikely situation even under the current pall, that left Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku, and the mysterious Darth Sidious as the possible perpetrators. Why would any of them capture a tourist? It was possible that she was Force-sensitive too (after all, it was a hereditary trait-), although the parents would most likely have noticed by now, even if the Jedi Watchman in the area had not. Kit would not be able to identify any of the presences of the CISs' darkside backers. But there was a slight gloom to the area, a feeling more distinct then the surrounding muddiness of the population.

Kit became aware then of the lightsaber clipped to his belt, of its weight on his hip. A Force-user meant an opportunity for a fight with it, one traditional weapon against another. He could almost feel something (unphysical -like heat-) running down his arms to the sinews at the backs of his hands—anticipation, tensing, that delicious readiness for danger that the Jedi had tried to quell in him.

They had given him mastery, had worked with and tempered (but not forbade) his love of personal combat. Like he had told them (his parents—what an alien-feeling word), he was happy as a Jedi.

"Master Fisto," Quinlan said, looking up from the trinket in his hand. "The one who matches the presence in the scuffle. They are still here."

* * *

"Excuse me, you mangy son of an armored rat," said Quinlan to the one waiter visible in the café. That was a black-clad Jenet who appeared from a back room as soon as the Jedi entered.

The rodentlike being, hirsute and sporting an impressively strong-looking jaw filled with canine teeth, looked up with beady eyes. "You're oddly knowledgeable of Jenet ways, you bandy-legged plebian."

"I make it a point to stoop to the level of lesser beings," Quinlan grumbled. Kit vaguely remembered learning about Jenets and their penchant for insults. "We need some information." Quinlan continued, and while the waiter's ears fluttered, he did not refuse.

"Of what kind?"

"Were you working here in the afternoon of two days ago?"

"I was."

"A young woman passed this way in the company of someone else moving her by force."

"Ah! Yes! I saw that. They were quite noisy. A Rattataki and a Nautolan."

Ventress, Kit thought. Then, This Jenet is excited, glad to be a piece of an investigation. How odd, to want to follow exciting events with the eyes but not to do anything to join—or prevent—them when they happen right outside your place of work.

Quinlan was asking, "Did you recognize them?"

"Yeah, I knew the Rattataki. She's a tenant across the street. Hasn't been for long, but I've seen her pass by before. Bald girl, pretty tall, carries…well I'd say she's got lightsabers, if I weren't pretty sure she ain't no Jedi.

"So, do I get recompense for this? What if she comes after me next?"

"If things go well," Quinlan said, "She won't be able to." He turned to leave, and Kit paused by the Jenet a moment.

"If needed, we'll return to you and enlist all the protection the Republic can afford. Thank you for your assistance…" Kit paused at the door and grinned. "…paltry as it was."

The Force led Kit and Quinlan up through the dingy apartment building across the alley from the café. The turbolift was broken, and so they took the stairs, a spiral of strong flowplas flecked with dust and paint, that wound along near the outside wall. Kit sent a brief comm message to the dispatchers at the Temple, to insure that the Jenet would not be left in danger for being a witness if Quinlan and himself were killed, and to let the Council know that their quarry had quite possibly been found.

Kit could not help but feel that Ventress seemed to want them to know that it was she—or at least a Force user of some sort—who had done the kidnapping. Why had she not bothered to hide her appearance, or at least her lightsabers? And if her purpose was to show herself, why had she attacked a tourist instead of someone high-profile?

Which lead back to the question of the importance of Nekai Fisto. Of, perhaps, Kit's sister.

As they climbed the stairs, the Force grew more cloying—it became impossible to distinguish Ventress' faint presence from that of the captive from the general murk, which was now clearly noticeable beside the teeming, mundane life-signs of Coruscant and the apartment building itself. The Jedi left the stairs on the highest floor of the building. It was a low one for this area, ending only twenty floors or so above the level of the alley where the crime had occurred. From a window beside the top of the stairs Kit could see that if there had once been higher floors they had been destroyed to make room for a skyhook, the wide base of which could be seen through a layer of grey clouds high above.

The Jedi shook the stiffness out of their legs at the top of the long climb. There was only one door on the last landing, a closed one situated at the end of a hall directly in front of the landing.

Quinlan muttered, "What's our plan of attack, Master Fisto?"

"Would you prefer Ventress or the captive?"

"I'll find the girl and at least tell her to run to the speeder, if you can hold out against Ventress."

"I think I can manage that." Kit gave a tight smile, nervous, but eager-

Vos' expression was morose or heavy, but Kit could sense that he was prepared to fight—potential hummed like plucked strings as the two approached the door.

Quinlan reached out for the control panel and hesitated for a moment, fingers of the Force examining the entryway for danger. Kit's head-tails shifted beneath one another as he scented residues of the apartment's earlier occupants, layered with sadness and comfort and fear. No matter how mean, these were homes—they had been, at times, comfortable to someone.

Quinlan opened the door. Kit had time to see a shabby sitting room containing a couch and a holoproj before Ventress dropped down from the ceiling to the floor in front of them. She crouched, then unfolded her thin form to stand before them, scarlet lightsabers flaring to life at her sides. "So," she began, her raspy, damaged-sounding voice, layered with mockery. She was hiding something, like the proverbial card up the sleeve. "You have come to take what is mine."

"No life can be owned," Quinlan growled.

Kit reached out into the Force for the bright presence of the girl, and found her behind a door off of the room stretching out just behind Ventress. Kit began to form the hand signals the Jedi used to communicate with clones and one another in wartime, but Quinlan had already picked up the presence and Kit's thoughts. The Kiffar began to pace smoothly forward.

Ventress stalked toward him, lightsaber extended in front of her.

"She is a child," Kit called out. "Why do you need her?"

The dark Jedi's only response was a trumpeting in the Force that heralded an attack. Her lightsabers pinwheeled toward Quinlan, and his green one flared to life in their neon trails. Ventress' voice cut though even that snap-hiss. She wheedled, but there was a confidence in her sense, a surety there as if the Jedi had already walked into a trap, had already failed, and so Kit's ability to predict her next actions were limited by her own perception of them as having already happened. There was a sour tang in the air, perhaps the scent of treachery.

Ventress said, "Maybe you're right. Let me show her to you." She glanced fearfully at the lightsabers, and despite the uncertainly of foreknowledge Kit allowed her to back away from him and Quinlan.

They did not take their eyes off her—while her dark gaze never left them—as she moved, shuffling backward to lay one bone-white hand on a door control panel.

She palmed the door open and called into the dark chamber it opened onto. Her voice was modulated, softer and less hissing than it had been. "There are Jedi here to see you, child."

The Nautolan ducking beneath Ventress' arm was a picture of imposed fear, even though the dark Jedi was only now allowing her presence to surge wild into the Force. Protectiveness welled up in Kit as the scent of her shyness hit his skin, forcing a scowl. The child—she could be his sister, Kit thought (and that could have inspired denial in him, but he was a Jedi Master, enslaved to only an attachment to melee), and with frightening insistence his hand strayed to his lightsaber.

The girl shuffled forward as Ventress pushed her by the shoulder. She wore brown pants and a russet tunic, and some of her half-grown, lime-green head-tails were bound together with yellow bands. The expression on her sharp face stabilized at abject fear and confusion when she looked at the men. Ventress stopped near the apartment's grimy window, a scant meter from Kit, one hand on Nekai Fisto's shoulder and one holding her still-lit lightsaber.

Quinlan paced toward her, all tiger-steps and wolf-scowl. He shouldered between Kit and Ventress, trying to placate Kit with a wave of a hand. He kept his eyes on the woman. "What do you want with her? Return her."

A thin smile lit Ventress' face and narrowed her eyes, and her hand shifted, flat and pale against the girl's tunic. The Force screamed ill intent, but she was blocking the Jedi from any knowledge of her next move, clutching it like a hawkbat with a granite slug in its claws. She said, "I want you to rescue her."

She turned, showing them a glimpse of her profile. The window's transparisteel pane slammed aside, assailing the room with the loud hiss of Coruscant traffic, and Ventress pushed the young Nautolan out the window.

Quinlan leapt after her, disappearing down the crumbling ferrocrete side of the building in a flash. The prongs of a grappling hook whipped up behind him. Kit glanced after them, but then Ventress' lightsaber flashed toward his throat.

He parried, and the blades shrieked at the contact.


	3. Chapter 3

**III**

Kit had only a moment to draw in breath for a fight, and to smirk, before Asajj Ventress turned and ran.

She hurtled across the room on the wings of the Force and slapped a control panel that opened onto a narrow, wooden stairway. She disappeared up the stairs, a blur of gray in the dimness sharpened by her neon-scarlet lightsabers, and Kit dashed up after her.

A flat roof was a rarity on Coruscant. Most structures were built up until gravity had to be fought to build them higher, and then capped with a plane or slope. That was the modern style, and it allowed for spacious views that increased an apartment or condominium's value. But this building was old, and now with the skyhook hanging over it like an executioner's blade it would never be changed. Its roof was an expanse of tile-patterned flowstone studded with a few pipes that billowed smoke into the evening air. Ventress spun across the tiles, settling her lightsabers into an upright guard, and Kit ran after her, tendrils flaring in a sunburst out from his skull.

They closed and clashed, one lightsaber flashing up and down before Ventress brought her second around—Kit ducked that slash and dodged to the side. Ventress chopped down at the outstretched leg the dodge left unguarded. Kit tucked the leg in and, with a twist impossible for a bony human arm and spine, struck at her back. She blocked it with one crimson blade and a flip of her elbow.

Kit had come too close to one of the venting pipes. He half-stifled a scream as the scalding heat struck his headtails and the small of his back. He Force-pushed the steam against Ventress' face and retreated from the pipe, leaving the combatants separated by almost a meter. Ventress seemed dazed by the heat, and spat like an angry cat as she moved out of its path. Kit realized with a belated shock that her far saber had cut through not only his cloak, so useful a distraction from the location of his body, but his tunic and no more than an inch of the muscle of his side as well. The pain began to register as a sharp burning.

Ventress careened through the smoke, screaming a battle cry. The Force painted an opening in the maelstrom of her lightsabers for Kit to take, and he slammed a bladed hand under her ribs and struck her across the knuckles with the hilt of his lightsaber before she regained her poise. One of her weapons clattered to the ground and deactivated with a hiss. She spun to face him, wrathful as a frightened cat, and they fought back toward the stairwell. Halfway there, she called her lost lightsaber back to her hand and the attack's ferocity redoubled.

She nearly had him cornered against the wall of the small, square structure that protected the stairwell when he angled away and _her_ back hit the wall. Kit tensed, his lightsaber diagonal between them, threatening her neck. "Why did you kidnap the child?"

The Force warned--she went to stamp on his foot and he stepped backwards. The few inches he relinquished allowed her to jump straight up and flip backwards. She landed crouched on the roof of the stairwell, too skinny to be a cat—a spider.

Ventress smiled, and it was warm and human. "I did it to be _seen._" She spread her arms, looked around, cackled at her own dramatic effect. "If there aren't news cameras on us now, there will be soon. They'll see us _disturbing the peace_. They'll see your friend, climbing the wall of a private residence. You Jedi are such nuisances to people just trying to have a quiet life." Again a smile, blatantly cruel now. "My master wants the Jedi Order exposed for what it is—paragons of goodness reduced to _killers _hired for the Republic. Hypocrites. Thieves of children."

**The girl dropped **into Quinlan's arms at the same time as the grappling hook caught the wall. His descent stopped whip-lashingly fast. He heard lightsabers ignited in the room above.

The Nautolan girl was heavy, and she was _writhing_, her body and headtails lashing against his chest while he tried to get one arm solidly under her legs so that she didn't fall further. "Calm down!" he growled close to her face, not even sure where the ears on a Nautolan _were_—she shuddered and screamed a few times, but then stilled and clutched at his shoulders. Before he lost any initial adrenaline he began climbing the line, walking up the building. He pushed the Nautolan over the windowsill and then climbed in after her. She got to her feet quickly.

Kit and Ventress had moved on, up a flight of stairs and out onto the roof. "Wait here," he said, and started up the stairs.

Before he had gone up four steps the top third of the stairwell exploded. Shrapnel and gray dust pelted his forearms instinctively thrown up in front of his face. A spike of pain flashed out from Kit's Force presence.

Quinlan retreated to the window he had come through and prepared to throw the grappling hook again and ascend to the roof via the outside of the building.

The girl said, "I want to come with you."

He looked back at her. "Nekai, right? No. This is dangerous."

"I don't want to be a damsel in distress—"

"And I don't want you to be killed." He activated his lightsaber, waved the green blade in front of her face, and she backed away. "The woman that kept you here has a couple of these and thermal detonators too, from the sound of it. This isn't your time to be a hero." He sheathed the lightsaber and went back to throwing the line; it sunk into the wall just below the roof a few meters above.

Nekai did not reply, and Quinlan began to climb the line.

'_**You**_** stole this **child, without permission.' Kit wanted to say it, but his own family rose unbidden in his thoughts, their faces and scents so similar to his own, and trapped his words.

He could not count the mothers—the fathers!—who cried when their infant was taken away, their only recompense safety from their offspring's uncontrolled Force powers, and Republic credits if they asked for them.

Ventress gave him no more time to think. He had been in reverie, or else Kit would have noticed her pull a thermal detonator from her belt and dial down its power setting.

She said, "Coruscant will know of the mess the Jedi have made." She dropped the little scuffed-silver sphere and jumped.

Kit leapt away in the opposite direction. The explosion was very small, only collapsing half of the stairwell shed. Kit began to move again as soon as the detritus cleared from the air.

The Nautolan equivalent of endorphins were buoying Kit up now. Despite his shallow wounds, he recognized an opportunity to taunt Ventress and took it. They were on the opposite side of the stairwell from where they had started, among almost head-high storage containers. Kit ran past the narrow pathways between the crates, giving Ventress a swift smile when he saw her stalking along opposite him. They were almost at the end of the cluster of crates.

She rasped, "Your loyalty to the Jedi is ridiculous."

_It's only Dun Moch. _"Maybe so," he said, and he dashed between the last two boxes and launched a flying kick that buckled Ventress' knee. Her lightsabers' low buzz, like the violent snap of scissors, whooshed over his head, nearly drowning out his reply—"but it's so much _fun!_" as he ducked, then pivoted to protect his body with his saber arm. They traded strikes, fear digging into her Force sense as elation flooded his.

This would be a mission he could remember with pride—a fight on a rooftop with Ventress—what an adventure!

Quinlan's presence glowed, dim but becoming more clear every moment. Ventress and Kit traded two more blows, the dark Jedi driving Kit backwards. Then Ventress looked down as Quinlan's green lightsaber sank to the hilt in the ground beside her foot. He pulled himself onto the roof before the green neon blade could shear out of the material horizontally, and stepped toward Ventress, lightsaber low but menacing.

"You're out numbered," Kit said with a smile.

Quinlain said, "You won't get back to the girl alive."

Ventress sneered, "I've completed my mission," she said, and she pulled out and primed a second thermal detonator.

Before the Jedi could react, she threw it; not at them, but down into the ally on Kit's right, the scene of the kidnapping. Both Kit and Quinlan thrust out their hands to catch it with the Force. It stopped in midair ten levels down—and exploded there, shattering every window that looked onto the ally. In a flash, Ventress glanced behind her and kicked Quinlan, slamming the ball of her foot against his sternum. Then she jumped away, farther than would be possible for one without the Force, through the haze of smoke released by the detonator and landed like a gray shadow on a ledge on the building across the alley. She ran for one of the adjacent streets; surely, thought, Kit, she was headed for a speeder.

Quinlan looked gruff as he moved to the edge of the roof; Ventress' kick had doubled him over. "Let's go get what we came here for."

"**Troubled you look**, Master Fisto. Unusual this is, hmm?"

Kit looked reverently to where Grand Master Yoda stood beside him on the steps of the Great Temple. The yellow Coruscant sunset cast long shadows from the towering statues of Jedi past. Kit, Quinlan, and Yoda stood on the stairs with Nekai Fisto a few paces away out of earshot, waiting for her family, the necklace that Quinlan had handed over to her held tightly in one fist.

"Ventress got what she wanted," Kit replied.

Yoda tipped his head like a bird, looking for clarification. His eyes, wise and silent as the depths of space, almost prevented him from looking comical.

"She told me that the purpose of the kidnapping was to implicate the Jedi in disturbing the peace. And it did just that; newscamera droids gravitated to the explosions and saw part of the fight. We may be billed as heroes, but nevertheless, common citizens see property destruction in what we did. HoloNet editorials say that we ought have let Coruscant police negotiate."

"Blind are those without the Force," Yoda said. "And cunning is the Sith. A dangerous bid for public support this was, and succeeded it did."

"That doesn't mean that Coruscanti will start rooting for the CIS," Quinlan said.

Yoda shook his head. "It does not. But none so simple is the Sith's plan, I think."

Kit did not have time to ask why a Sith, always shadowy figures who saw non-Force-users as slaves or beings entirely below their notice, would bother garnering the support of the Coruscanti commoners. The Fisto family approached among the statues, Aning's head held high and straight, while Karef looked up in awe at the Temple, much closer now than tourists were allowed to get. Investigator Wakani accompanied them, a datapad in her blue hand and a demure expression on her face.

Nekai broke any potentially awkward no-man's land between the two groups by running forward and throwing herself into the arms of her mother. Aning's eyes when they rose from Nekai's shoulder were rainbow-colored like oil spilled over pavement; the Nautolan equivalent of a human crying who does not know whether it is crying for happiness or woe.

Karef exuded enough gratitude that Kit almost expected an embrace himself. Yoda gestured Investigator Wakani away for a moment to talk about something, and tugged Quinlan along with him, leaving Kit nominally alone with the family when they finished their intense reunion with Nekai.

His family. He had little doubt of it now. Sight and smell and the Force told him something about the four of them being together, something without words. It was _right_ for them to be here.

"I don't know how we could ever thank you," Aning said, the Force giving the flavor of human tears to her Nautolan-rainbow eyes.

"No need." Kit gave a dimmed, polite and fake smile. In a way, he wanted to go home with them, to see what their lives were like.

Karef said, "You were as loyal and good as any brother she could hope to have."

_Or any son we could hope to have_, sang the Force, but Aning quietly asked Kit, "What is your first name?"

Tensely he told her, and to his great surprise, all of them quietly laughed once the single syllable had passed his lips. Kit let his confusion show.

"That's a child's name!" Nekai said shamelessly, giggling. "From before its mother knows what to call it!"

Aning slipped her hand onto Nekai's shoulder, blue between green headtails. Nervously Nekai shifted, parting her headtails into their usual two groups. "He doesn't know that," Aning chided. "He was given to the Jedi early." Then the Nautolan woman looked at Kit. She said, "You weren't raised right." And for a moment Kit thought she would demand he go back to Glee Anselm with her, even as grown as he was. But the Jedi would not allow that, and however sure of her connection to Kit Aning Fisto was, she knew that too. "You don't get enough open water."

And then Yoda was there at Kit's side, looking up and taking the family's attention. "An appropriate name it is. Laughs, Kit does, as often as a child. Laughs _Quinlan _does, as often as a stone!"

The Fistos laughed good-naturedly, a bit surprised that the Jedi Grand Master had a sense of humor. Nekai's smile had an element of _I can't wait to tell my schoolmates I know two Jedi Knights' names _in it.

It did not appear that Kit was going to be given any more time along with the family. It was formal after that, bows and _thank you_s and handshakes. Kit met his mother's eyes as she turned away, but she turned nonetheless. Anger prickled at Karef's Force sense, but he would say nothing. They had talked about this. Nekai's thin shoulders were proudly set.

The Force threatened to fling Kit into their presences, to bury him in the distractions of their lives, but Yoda said, "We do not let younglings see their parents not because we are cruel, but because we want them to be old enough to understand that good can come from hardship…"

_Fin. _


End file.
